


Bold Mouth

by lollki



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Characters, Alternate Universe - College/University, Art Students! Akaashi & Suga, Getting Together, M/M, akaashi is too proud to admit he has feelings, angsty, keiji and koushi friendship!, kinda bitter atmosphere, lotsa description, mentions of daisuga breakup, minor KuroSuga, one scene, part of a college!verse i have for the volleygays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 09:30:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4999600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollki/pseuds/lollki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"The charcoal pen in his hand drops between the pages of his sketchbook, pointing toward a drawing, a mouth and a set of eyes that might not be coloured on the grainy paper but that his mind paints golden."</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Akaashi Keiji doesn't like being in love. The sensation is too messy, too confusing, too hard to be controlled. He prefers to stay with his eyes above the water of that sea where he can maintain overview, stay level-headed. But then there's people like Bokuto who jump into the water head-first without hesitation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bold Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! I've never posted on here before so it might be a little badly formatted idk? Also English is not my first language so there might be some mistakes thrown in here and there but shouldn't be anything major. Overall, I was like damn, I spend so much time starting stories how about (innovative concept) I actually finish one? well, this is the first thing I've finished since like 2k12 so I am quite proud!  
> But yeah.... That's it! Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing :}

Like the waves of an ocean, Keiji lets his head roll to the side, then forward, fluid, round like the moment before wavebreak. The charcoal pen in his hand drops between the pages of his sketchbook, pointing toward a drawing, a mouth and a set of eyes that might not be coloured on the grainy paper but that his mind paints golden.  
The laugh from the person beside him falls into the shells of his ears, the ones that reproduce ocean sound in ultimate silence, distant and far when nobody’s talking, and it channels in Tokyo Friday night, inbetween buildings, wind and the trees in parks, alongside the whisper of cicadas.  


“What happened then?”, he perceives a familiar voice, closer this time. Akaashi lifts his head and sees Koushi after a weary blink, sitting on the other end of their balcony. The young man opposite of him displays a relaxed expression and looks inviting as ever, soft, easy, dripping honey eyes and the sketchbook formerly between his skilled fingers now resting on the table, a repurposed old wooden box for orange juice.  
His artist hands are clasped around a green glass filled with wine that tilts to the side as he places it on the table with a clacking sound so he could listen to his friend’s talking but candlelight draws Keiji’s unwanted attention to the tips of Koushi’s fingers, how they brush Tetsurou’s cotton-clad upperarm. A head of hair that is as dark as the summer concrete a few floors beneath them falls to the side, toward his silver boy and eyes find a mole and cheekbones and a face. The moment is orange and warm like their closed eyelids, before the two of them momentarily submerge into a bubble of togetherness, imprinted into memory forever and when they return, fresh and green, it’s almost like after a bath in clear lake water.  


“Can you believe it, he even drank the rest of it!”  
Koushi hums and smiles at Koutarou’s antics, thinks: _that probably wasn’t a very good idea_ and Tetsurou laughs. Only after what has been a month of knowing each other Koushi and Tetsurou are so perfectly in synch as if they share a headspace. When Keiji looks at them on an evening like this, in the intimate comfort of Keiji’s and Koushi’s apartment, he isn’t sure what to feel. Often it appears to him that he feels sorry for Daichi’s loss. How him and Koushi broke up quite a long time ago but he still can’t claim to be over it while Koushi’s roots already started healing and are gingerly but safely starting to embed into new earth. Keiji feels like he’s the fair and righteous voice, how it isn’t Koushi’s place to be over something so valuable so fast but every time after he follows this train of thought for as little as five seconds he realizes it’s more along the lines of _  
how is it fair that he gets to chose while I’m by myself_.

It’s toxic in his consciousness like a mantra, a broken record because the more he hears it the more he answers to it with a silent and timid _he’s more deserving_.

“Did you hear about that time Yamamoto almost swallowed glass though?”  


Keiji is broken out of his melancholic reverie when a firm voice speaks right next to him. Upon a quick glance to the side he recognizes the reference for his drawings and a set of golden eyes with which Koutarou expresses at least as animatedly as with the rest of his body. Arms that gesture wildly above his head painting words into thin air, tall shoulders sagging forward before pulling back rapidly to underline the climax of his tale. A repertoire of an infinite number of faces, dissappointed, enthusiastic, upset, lively. 

_He's so ridiculously beautiful,_ Keiji thinks but doesn't say.  
Keiji’s eyes hold on to two trained hands, follow them like a lifeline because his focus is blurred and he's starting to feel like water and fog. 

A light smile shows on his face when he hears the three of his best friends laugh together but it’s like somehow he can’t bring himself to emerge into the conversation they’re having, like he’s still watching from the outside. During the next words his eyes train onto the table in front of him, find scraps of paper, an ashtray, bottles and the few candles that pierce points of orange light into his retina. The same light casts a long shadow over one of Koushi’s drawings that depicts Keiji himself and has the kiss red stain of a wine bottle right where his eyes connected to his cheeks decorate the side of his face.

Keiji feels like he’s actually asleep, dreaming about this moment and about the lights in the other Tokyo houses’ windows switching on and off nervously alongside the people who live there.  


“I’m gonna go get something to drink.”  


A lighter flicks on and cigarette smoke is being inhaled. He watches Tetsurou watch him before Keiji realizes he probably just interrupted someone with his words because their eyes are in question, even Koutarou’s. As he stands up he perceives the noises he makes in a strange way, like another Keiji in a parallel reality is right at that moment making the exact same movements as him. For a moment he doesn’t even realize that Koutarou is fidgeting to get out of his seat as well until he hears him say “I’m coming, too.” and his mouth draws a flat line while his heart is threatening to break out of his ribcage.

Koushi and Tetsurou look at each other a heartbeat longer than necessary and their cheekbones and the tips of their noses are painted yellow in stark darkness.

Keiji’s hands smooth over the plastic surface of their kitchen counter when he arrives in this isolated silence, darkness; he doesn't bother to turn on the light.  
The static music from cheap 30 $ speakers vanishes with the closing of a door, when Koutarou and Keiji are suddenly left to their own devices and there is no protection from important words.  
Keiji turns his back to Koutarou and opens the door to the fridge without further ado, his white lips turning whiter from pressing them together as if to prevent any unwanted confessions spilling out carelessly.  
Five fingers clasp around the neck of a bottle, cool and damp and green and he pulls it out, places it on the table with a quiet thud. A drop of water is meanwhile running down the back of his hand and two eyes are drawing circles on his back in the darkness where he wishes there would be Koutarou's mouth instead.  


It isn’t at all like Koutarou not to speak like that, to keep his lips glued together where usually they always have something to say, somewhere to elaborate, someone to explain.  
Keiji opens a drawer and the noise of clattering silverware somehow startles them both.  


“What is it?” Keiji breaks the silence harshly.  
Like he's bracing himself to fall any moment Koutarou holds on to the counter behind him, steadying his traitorous legs.  


“Nothing much?” he lies and thinks about how it would feel to close his arms around Keiji's smaller frame. Keiji gives him a look and a weary sigh, a bottle opener looking almost threatening like a weapon in his left hand.  


“I was just, uh-”  


Koutarou then begins again, swallowing notably before letting his head fall back in exasperation.  


“Like, are we a _thing_?”  


Keiji drops the bottle opener and coughs quietly, before he regathers himself and puts on a cool expression.  
“Uh…” he starts like he's trying to illegitimize the other’s question. “We had sex. Twice. Drunk.”  
Koutarou tries to seem positive but he visibly deflates when he hears Keiji’s indifferent tone of voice. He looks so hurt and right after speaking, Keiji wants to backpedal and kiss him where it hurts.  


“I mean I still kinda… you know…”  
Keiji just looks at him trying his best to remain stoic before he shakes his head.  
“Excuse me, I’m cold, I’m gonna go get a sweater.”  


Keiji just turns around after granting his opposite another look, his dark eyes cutting blades in their equally dark surroundings. His voice is quiet and soft, almost shy like he’s not saying something that needs to be said but there’s still something about the way he said it, a certain finality that makes Koutarou cast his eyes to the floor, dirty, and makes him deflate. In a whisper, barely audible over the hum of the fridge and laughter that makes its way through the thick glass of the door to the balcony he can hear Koutarou say:  
“You _are_ cold.”  


The fact that Keiji hears his words isn’t intentional but when he stops in his tracks for the tenth of a second Koutarou notices his own impact and regrets. Keiji doesn’t reply and disappears around the corner. Without really meaning to, just by his feet carrying him along Koutarou follows him and sees him through the doorframe to his room, looking at a sweater in his hands like it’s an object of sadness, his normally stoic features drawn into a look between disgust, bitterness and regret.  


Without realizing he’s talking, Koutarou’s mouth spill the words “I’m sorry.” with concern and an empty face turns toward him, all expression wiped from it like the blank pieces of paper Keiji often fills with lines and colour. Somehow Koutarou isn’t sure where to go next so he stands there and watches Keiji watch him in a room that could never be entirely empty.  


“Why are you so the way you are.”  


Koutarou doesn’t know what he’s talking about and lets it show but Keiji is faster.  


“You talk and act before you think, you’re all quick to jump. Your emotions go up and down like that one time when you saw a discarded toy on the sidewalk and for you it was the saddest thing in the world. Then after that you suddenly find another thing that’s the saddest thing in the world. It’s…”  
He seems at a loss for words now and draws his dark eyebrows together, his glance still fixed onto the young man in front of him, his eyes a mirror for wonder and calculation along with a point of light behind Koutarou.  
“It’s unfamiliar.”  


This time it’s Keiji’s words that leave an impact and make something in Koutarou’s mind work like changing gears, something that stops spinning and another thing that starts moving.  


“You _do_ watch me.”  


Keiji doesn’t want to admit.  


“I watch everyone.”  


After that he grows quiet and notices how the air around Koutarou changed; he looks mature in this lack of light, almost as if his spontaneity was just a facade and this was the real him. Keiji knows that isn’t true but he opens his eyes to this new side of him and sees a lot more than he’d expected.  


“You’re cold, right?”

Koutarou asks and Keiji nods even though he doesn’t have a clue about the other’s intentions, like an impulse that just shakes through his system. Koutarou’s hands grab the lower hem of his hoodie and he pulls it over his head, offers it to Keiji by stretching his left arm in front of his body even though they’re still five steps apart. The quiet thud of Keiji’s own sweater in his hands falling to the floor is almost inaudible but to Koutarou it’s like slamming his head into concrete. It means something.  


They’re four steps apart now. Keiji moves toward him.  


Three steps and Keiji knows that this is the point where his self in the parallel universe is making the wrong decision. He takes hold of the piece of fabric offered to him and if Koutarou wasn’t so unsure of himself at the moment he’d be jumping happiness for the tiniest smile he gets; it lasts for the tenth of a second but it doesn’t go unnoticed. 

In this time he’s paralyzed and doesn’t notice how suddenly he has a body pressed up against his own and a mouth that presses against the piece of skin between his ear and cheek. "You're so warm." he feels as a whisper against his skin that makes a shiver run down to his toes. He doesn’t even notice when Keiji’s lips touch his and he’s kissing back until Keiji’s head falls into his open palm, soft and warm and he gets to inhale his smell and hold his soft weight. Keiji's head tilts back into the embrace of Koutarou's hand to his neck; feels fingertips massaging the nape, the pink that blooms up and dies down, the nails that brush against Keiji’s short hair. 

Keiji’s fingertips are pressing four white shapes into Koutarou’s upper arm before it goes back to red, redraw, erase. Somewhere inbetween Keiji peceives a faint whisper that he feels against his mouth rather than hears “I think I’m in love with you.” and his breath hitches and he hopes Koutarou doesn't notice how his face is warmer than before.  


He doesn’t answer because it sounds too much like his own thoughts that don’t yet dare to spill but he breaks his own lie with the sound of a sharp inhale through his nose as two knuckles find his cheek.

It’s beautiful, something that Koutarou stores away for a colder moment when he’s not so sure the universe is working in his favour.

Keiji parts and looks down between them long enough for Koutarou to wonder if he made a mistake but he didn’t, ignores the thought and kisses the left side of his mouth. The sweater in his hand is long forgotten and his unoccupied hand grabs onto Koutarou’s upper arm. Before Koutarou has the chance to kiss him again Keiji says in the way one would say a heartfelt confession: “We _are_ something…”  


Keiji in the parallel reality is now back on the balcony, receiving a worried look from Koushi because he’s the only one who knows about how he's in love, feeling like dust on certain books that are never opened.  
This Keiji hears a breath and a soft murmur of words against the shell of his ear (the same ones that reproduce ocean sound in ultimate silence, distant and far when nobody’s talking) and it’s Koutarou saying:  
“I knew it.”

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you liked or what i could improve :)


End file.
